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Feb 26, 2022

Chernnobyl fungus feeds on nuclear radiation

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, nuclear energy

😀 😍 circa 2018.


You know Chernobyl, right? The place of the biggest nuclear accident in the world? The are is so radioactive nobody lives in the vicinity anymore, and nearby plants are suffering major amounts of radiation. However, not everybody is sad about this event; a type of fungi (mushrooms) possess an ability beyond imagination: they can take the lethal radiation and use it as a source of energy to feed and grow. Researchers have called them radiotrophic fungus.

For some 500 million years, fungi have been inhabiting this planet, feeding on whatever they could finding, filling every biological niche they could find. But who could have actually guessed that they could feed on nuclear radiation? Researchers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (AEC) had a hunch, and they investigated it to test. They first got the idea after reading that samples brought from Chernobyl were filled with some black fungi growing on it.

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  1. It is very scary and unusual that this is happening there now, I hope scientists or simple enthusiasts will figure it out!